Sunday, September 06, 2015

Dashed Off III

A single argument has rigorous further implications, narrows the field for other arguments, and suggests, as if they were shadows or echoes, other arguments by analogy.

"Substance is a being producing an act we consider as immanent to the substance itself (accident); cause is a being producing an action outside itself (effect)." (Rosmini)
"A sensible quality cannot stand without a substance, an action cannot stand without a cause. In this way the intellect by completing sensation arrives at substance; by completing perception, it arrives at cause." (Rosmini)

"...no classes can be absolutely artificial, for if they were, no assertions, could be made concerning them." (Whewell)
-> this explains how artificial systems converge on natural classification
-> note next aphorism, xc: artificial systems have natural smaller groups
-> artificial systems can provide diagnostic characteristics even for the natural system

Schopenhauer's account of the four modes of explanation is inherently anti-reductionist, and not, in particular, the issues for physics created by Schopenhauer's splitting of the mateiral & the mathematical.

NB that Schopenhauer takes the law of inertia to follow directly from PSR

From the subject/object distinction one can never get an adequate account of the actual/potential distinction, but the latter can account for the former.

Every change has many different kinds of causes.

There is no way to distinguish bias from facility or tenacity except teleologically.

You could get an interesting result by substituting 'Vishnu' every time Schopenhauer says 'Wille'.

(Schopenhauer) cause depends on 'time' -> no simultaneity of causation -> all causation is a temporal relation between changes -> impossibility of cosmological argument.

Music presents itself to us not merely as temporal but also as filling space.
distance as part of our musical experience

"What begins to be can only be brought about by an activity that goes forth from something actual." (Edith Stein)

All changes depend on things that are not changes.

human dignity as a ground of rational dialogue

joy as the way charity sustains other virtues

The internalizing of the work of fasting as discipline is perhaps the most difficult, but most essential aspect of it. Mercy is what makes it possible.

Angels are important to Christology because the Son is higher than the angels.

keys to the kingdom & Michael (3 Bar 11:2; 4 Bar 9:5)

"virtues that are flaunted will not remain" (Chrysologus)

Hope is the line between being a hero and being a victim.

NB that Leibniz takes Archimedes' equilibrium principle as a special case of the PSR

It is often dangerous to assume there is only a single rational way of doing things.

silence : mind :: fasting : body

Precedent is important in law because it requires caution about what is permissible.

Precedent is important when safety (in the casuistic sense) is important.

Wherever Bakhtin talks about 'the essence of the genre' you could talk instead about 'the spirit of the genre'.

debates as simulations

People regularly attribute to time what more properly belongs to potentiality.

The subject/object distinction is not without ambiguous cases; in presential knowledge the subject is quasi-object, and in sympathetic understanding the object is quasi-subject, and there are cases having to do with the body in which it is difficult to determine which should be taken to detemrine which should be taken as which, i.e., whether something is subject or object.

What Newton means by 'body' is a particular kind of quantity.

A measurement in the full sense includes the abstract schema of that which measures, by which it is taken to measure as it does.

the real as observed, as measured, as inferred

traditions as partial circulations of ideas

(1) Unreasonable beliefs cannot merely be reasoned away.
(2) No belief systems are completely closed.
(3) Apparent absurdity is something presupposing a system that can classify it as such.

A measure of lvoe is how often you are willing to lose because of it.

In penance we prosecute ourselves before a court of mercy.

The natural mode of knowing divine things is by development of concepts through rational inference. Faith expands these concepts by 'feel', a sort of good taste in evaluating how these concepts may be developed. But the gift of understanding takes us beyond and above our natural mode of knowing divine things, turning the 'feel' of faith into clarity.

Reconciliation turns us to the disposition through which the gifts of the Spirit may be most effective.

The gifts cover the same ground as the virtues, but they order the works to a higher and more perfect end.

the gift of fear as protection of chastity and other kinds of temperance.

The gifts are not higher than the theological virtues but super-chargers of them, means whereby the theological virtues do more, effect more, influence more.

The Beatitudes are acts anticipating by merit the excellence of heaven, produced through the gifts of the Spirit.

Faith is a dawn.

the gifts of the Spirit as the bias of heaven

(1) 'time' is a measure of change by change
(2) causation is not intrinsically temporally successive
(3) the question of how causing relates to measures of time

Love is the strongest creator of common good.

Every sacrament is a kind of promise.

memorial, reflective, and anticipatory sacramentalia

icons as icons & icons as sacramentalia

Encouraging institutes that serve conscience is one of the ends of government.

To distract oneself from death and endure it is a common lot; to face it and endure it is a sort of greatness.

The gifts of the Spirit each counter ways in which even goodness, even great goodness, can fail or be defeated.

Verification is a form of discovery.

A commonwealth is structured by natural obligations of interest and moral obligations of honor and of conscience.

Language seems to do much of what the ancient Greeks and ancient Chinese attributed to music. (Note the Lunyu: "Education begins with poetry, is confirmed by ceremonial regulation, and is perfected by music." Yueji 17: "The sage makes music to respond to Heaven and institutes rituals in accord with earth." Yueji 11: "Music emerges from within, while ceremony acts form without.")

Liturgy should always be humane, appropriate, well ordered, discerning, and faithful in its development and its practice.

poetry, ritual, and music as part of the ecology of virtue

sublimity from the interaction of beautiful things

Given a number of facts about human biology and society, if the elderly are not especially respected they will be especially marginalized.

Goodness and wisdom naturally create traditions.

Our natural tendency to courtesy and modesty is a seed of participation in tradition.

Customary law is built through agreeableness and utility.
Hume's Treatise book III as an account of customary law

Regularities are designated explanatory or not entirely on the basis of prior causal assumptions.

Note Hume's 'inviolable maxim' at T 3.3.1.10 & its relation to the Dialogues (cp also 1.3.15.6 and 2.1.3.6-7)

Perceivers must in some sense, though not necessarily by conscious choice, select what to attend to; so voluntary representation of information is a pervasive feature of our sources of information.

the Church calendar as a way of preaching the gospel

In interpretations of deontic logics, 'permissible' is often used in a way ambiguous between 'permitted' and 'able to be permitted'.

Half the power of wisdom is found in listening.

constructing preparations for intuitions, building opportunities for insight

Charity naturally expresses itself in intercession.

Scotus's five kinds of instrumentality (Ordinatio 4 dist 6)
(1) power to power in esse quieto
(2) effect to effect
(3) in fieri
(4) power participated in part and whole
(5) artificial

In creation the exemplar causes of the bread and the wine are the divine ideas in the Word; in the conversion of transubstantiation the exemplar cause becomes the Word Himself insofar as He can be communicated to us.

Every genuine prayer is purgative, illuminative, and unitive, but the prayer of beginners is purgative in nature and illuminative and unitive in anticipation, whereas another prayer by illuminative by nature, purgative by memorial and unitive by anticipation, etc.

providence itself as a sort of tradition

Tradition is not mere repetition but harmonization. It is a harmony leading to harmonies.

Through self-discipline and participation in traditions one becomes sympathetic.

Laws controal actions from after the action; traditions control action from before the action.

Cities are built out of ceremonies.

Traditions establish limits of actions and cultivate the mind.

What could tradition possibly be to one who had no sympathy?

intrinsically disordered cognition

the role of analogy in discovery of signification

Regularity has explanatory force only through resemblance to something explanatory in itself.

Even merely conjectural and probable knowledge of the noblest things is more valuable than certain knowledge of lesser things.

By His Ascension Christ shows that through Him human beings can participate in divine authority, power, and wisdom itself.

Material resistance in a tradition causes deterioration over time.

If the natural term or limit for a causal chain is set by a principal cause, a causal chain with no principal cause has no natural restriction on possible effects.

natural theology as the narthex of the Church

Natural theology is not external to the Church because creation is not external to the Church.

gratuitous evil // irreducible complexity

sacramentalia as signs of intercessory acts

Holy orders allows one to certify things as prayers of the Church; thus represening the unity of the mystical Body.

The Notes of the Church are primarily and principally notes of episcopal orders; but in circles out from that, so to speak, they are also in extended ways notes of all the sacraments imprinting an indelible character.

revelation through a person vs revelation in a person

the Notes of Torah/Israel (linked to the Election of Israel)

hand : instrument of instruments :: rational soul : form of forms

Every vestment has a bearer in which it is invested.
vestment as quasi-part

Metaphysics must explain the possibility of metaphysicians.

logic, poetry, perspectival polyphony

Part of intellectual humility is recognizing the power of reasoning. A great many who claim intellectual humility through disparaging the latter in reality imposing ad hoc assumptions in order to do so -- the very opposite of intellectual humility. Assuming is not more intellectually humble than reasoning, nor is guessing.

The authentic interpretation of Scripture and Tradition must come from withing the Tradition-informed proclamation of Scripture.

All applications of purported principles of common cause clearly make contiguity assumptions.

narrative explanation as providing a framework for evidence-seeking

before & after as presupposing actuality and potentiality

music as an instrument for enduring penitential practice (Chrysologus)

reserve networks for traditions (curated conservation areas)

Cant arises only because it originally meant something.

care fragmentation

term -> indefinite relevance attribution -> analogy

The supererogatory and the obligatory are not opposed, as if we are considering mutually exclusive actions rather than aspects or properties of actions.

RElative to a given problem, a work may be supererogatory by meeting the requirements of that problem but also meeting the requirements of other problems. (bonus problem-solving, killing two birds with one stone)

supererogation // consilience

Every harmony has a grounding principle

Hume's separation principle as an anti-PSR

All relativities suggest invariances.

"...men act geometry and mechanics, chemistry and physiology, before they know those sciences." (Whewell)

Christ as Son of God -> Christ as Prophet, Priest, King -> Christ as Head (as Apostle of the Father)

unity of consciousness // unity of consciousnesses

survival-purposes, propagation-purposes, inquiry-purposes for bodily organs in use

Heresy drips honey but in the end is as bitter as wormwood; seductively expressed, it persuades, dominates with glib talk. All at once the heretic follows, not knowing it will cost him eternal life.

action sequencing and choice structuring in contracts

"That rules springing from remote and unconnected quarters should thus leap to the same point, can only arise from that being the point where truth resides." (Whewell)
->Note that this is a causal inference.

consilience as a problem for Bayesian epistemologies

The naturalistic mind is a duplication of the body, without the organs, a dispositive residue abstracted from a living body.

The central strength of continental philosophy has been its suspicion of facile naturalisms.

desires as multidirectional signs

fable as the most basic way to handle complex abstractions

the impossibility of infinite regress in proper middle terms

transubstantiation as change of real definition

Secondary qualities are a point at which sharp divisions between 'in the mind' and 'out in the world' break down.

musement as strolling thought

Animals are to some extent self-dwelling.

directional mereologies

'A is a necessary condition for B' is a normative statement in any practical context.

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For a rough introduction to my philosophy of blogging, including the Code of Amiability I try to follow on this weblog, please read my fifth anniversary post. I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions.